Chinese Australia

What if China never turned itself to isolation and let Zheng He, and Hong Bao to explore more until they landed in a fertile area let say in Botany Bay or in Darwin and decides to colonize Australia after the Ming is being overthrown by the Manchus.

or

Dutch explores the Australia's east coast and lands in Botany Bay and colonize then the Dutch realize themselves that their numbers are too small to colonize in their own right and decides to recruit Chinese or Indonesian workers to develop Australia in case they discover a gold deposits or cultivates the arable land.

What would be the effects to world history if Australia is largely populated by the Chinese and Malays instead of the Europeans in OTL?
 
i think u r thinking of Japan and its isolation. China was isolated. It should be if Japan wasnt isolated and explored to Australia. It would also yield a much better outcome as well i would think. Instead of being a small island nation, Japan could grow in Australia by annexing the Japanese islands to China and then they move to Australia. Good idea though.
 
What if China never turned itself to isolation and let Zheng He, and Hong Bao to explore more until they landed in a fertile area let say in Botany Bay or in Darwin and decides to colonize Australia after the Ming is being overthrown by the Manchus.

or

Dutch explores the Australia's east coast and lands in Botany Bay and colonize then the Dutch realize themselves that their numbers are too small to colonize in their own right and decides to recruit Chinese or Indonesian workers to develop Australia in case they discover a gold deposits or cultivates the arable land.

What would be the effects to world history if Australia is largely populated by the Chinese and Malays instead of the Europeans in OTL?

I remember posting a thread like this.


Many said the Chinese colonization is like an Ant's: Where there is opprotunity for a better life, they go. Unless China find's Australia's Gold first thing, they wouldn't be interested in the continent.

The Second scenario is the most likely. I'd imagine Something along the lines of New York's China Town, with both groups (White and Asian) staying away from each other with some racial conflict involved.

Australia would be somewhat resembling OTL's South Africa, with racial tensions culminating in violence, and then a remake of political and social makeup of Australia.
 
The Ming Dynasty didn't explore anything, they travel well known routes in an official capacity. The Chinese knew all about the Indian Ocean probably a millenia earlier, the Song Dynasty had big 4 masted long range sailing ships. There was nothing of interest to the Chinese anywhere they would have reached, or anyone else for that matter, which is why Australia wasn't colonised until 1778.
 
What if China never turned itself to isolation and let Zheng He, and Hong Bao to explore more until they landed in a fertile area let say in Botany Bay or in Darwin and decides to colonize Australia after the Ming is being overthrown by the Manchus.

or

Dutch explores the Australia's east coast and lands in Botany Bay and colonize then the Dutch realize themselves that their numbers are too small to colonize in their own right and decides to recruit Chinese or Indonesian workers to develop Australia in case they discover a gold deposits or cultivates the arable land.

What would be the effects to world history if Australia is largely populated by the Chinese and Malays instead of the Europeans in OTL?

You've proposed two very diffferent scenarios and will manifest themselves in different but not entirely dissimilar ways.

The former case, Australia perhaps start out as an anchorage for the Ming fleet, and then a refugee during the Ming collapse. This would resemble the relocation of the royal court to Burma in OTL, except they likely wont be pursued and hunted down given the distance. It does mean that the literate classes who still believe in a Han self ruled state would go to Australia. It wont be just a one time thing, but there would be a continous emmigration during the Qing dynasty, whatever official disapproval of emmigration. The dynasty itself may not last. But ultimately a government resembling a Chinese dynasty would exist, and in some way rival the Qing Empire for legitimacy.

The second case would mean an Australia as part of the Dutch Empire with a large Chinese population doing and running daily business for their Dutch overlords. Perhaps the Chinese would be so dominant that the Dutch would live with anxiety that their role is marginalized. That would be a close analogy to the Dutch colony at Jakarta. However this will not be a Chinese colony in all but name as the Dutch feared. Because what actually happened was the Dutch created an aristocratic class out of the wealthy Chinese business class to lord over the fresh off the boat Chinese immigrants. This divide and rule strategy created a bifurcated Chinese society where the bottom remained very Chinese and the top became "more Dutch than the Dutch".

It is possible that at some time this colony would seek independence. The result would be a state with hybrid cultural characteristics, which would interact with Holland and China in interesting ways. Perhaps it would offer a model for modernization of China, as Hollandized-Chinese joint stock companies seek trade expansion to their ancestoral homelands.

How a remanent Ming successor in Australia deal with the outside world would also be interesting. Cut off and stranded in Australia, the Chinese colonies would be forced to seek maritime trade to survive. It's reaction to the later Portugese and Dutch traders would likely be more business minded than the autarkic Qing dynasty. So this colony, too would be more open to the outside world. But it would also be a closer reflection of China than our other case. In many ways, it could be what America was to Britain. It's cultural ties to the ancestoral land would compell it to interject itself into Qing politics in some way. Everytime a rebellion break out in China, the Manchus would have to be mindful of a possible overseas connection.
 
i think u r thinking of Japan and its isolation. China was isolated. It should be if Japan wasnt isolated and explored to Australia. It would also yield a much better outcome as well i would think. Instead of being a small island nation, Japan could grow in Australia by annexing the Japanese islands to China and then they move to Australia. Good idea though.

It would be a more interesting if the Chinese and the Japanese emigrates to Australia together if they kept open their ports to foreign trade and not resorting to isolation. Australia may turn into a giant South Africa if the Chinese and the Japanese mixed together in Australia and maybe in a long-run, Australia will be a superpower with large Chinese and Japanese population with earlier colonization of that continent.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
When the Ming in exile in Australia start to collapse, a former Ming soldier's family is killed by bandits and he kills them off in a rampage of revenge, chaining one to an ox drawn wagon rigged to explode and getting the other trampled by a large carriage. He then rides out into the Outback, a burnt out desolate man, haunted by the demons of his past.

Later, several years on, he comes to a remote gold mine besieged by bandits lead by a masked body builder who tells the miners and their former Ming bureacrat leader to just walk away and he will spare their lives. The former soldier makes a deal to get them a large wagon to take the gold to the northern coast, does this and is injured trying to leave. He aggrees to drive the wagon out of the mine with the bandits chasing him. The wagon turns out to be full of sand and the miners escape with the gold hidden in their wagons.

After that, further beyond that, he is driving a wagon pulled by a team of camels that is hijacked by a man riding a Buddhist kite and makes his way to a remote settlement called Merchant Town. Merchant Town is run by a female former prostitute dueling for power with a dwarf riding on top of a large mentally challenged person named Emperor/Warrior who runs the town's energy supply which is pigs defecating to fuel lamps. He fights Emperor/Warrior in a kung fu match in a large iron cage but throws the fight by showing mercy and is exiled into the Outback.

In the Outback he finds a group of Aboriginal children whose Chinese educated parents were killed when the Ming collapsed. They believe him to be their savior, but he is not. He leads them to Merchant Town and then aids them in escaping back to the ruins of the main Chinese settlement and seat of Ming power where OTL Sydney would be.
 
Found this artist's interpretation of a Chinese catamaran, which would be a fusion of Chinese and Polynesian sailing technology. This sort of design may well be common in this alternative world.

Ysi__Large_catamaran_design_by_Naeddyr.jpg


http://naeddyr.deviantart.com/art/Ysi-Large-catamaran-design-119822344
 
Top